The three plays’ plots are from the same period and deal with marginalized groups and they are all
critical to the regimes they “bear witness” of. Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot and its portrayal of the
apartheid, which is in the main focus of this paper, is analysed from the points of view of
unfulfilled love, use of derogatory language and a desire for private space, that all contribute to
the complex criticism of the racist regime of South African apartheid of the 1960s. The criticism,
although implicit, becomes even more apparent and radical when presented in comparison with August
Wilson’s Two Trains Running and Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!


 Criticism of the Apartheid in Blood Knot in Comparison with Two Trains Running and Philadelphia,
                                           Here I Come!

The three plays offer an insight into events within small communities on the background of
important changes in the particular societies. They portray three different societies in various
stages of socio-political transformation that are powerfully reflected in the three dramas. The
settings of all of them takes place in the 1960s. Blood Knot by Athol Fugard (first staged in 1961
as The Blood Knot, revised in 1988) is situated in the segregated township of Port Elizabeth in
South Africa; Two Trains Running by August Wilson (first staged in 1990) is set in the
African-American neighbourhood in Pittsburgh, USA; and Philadelphia, Here I Come! by Brian Friel
(first staged in 1964) in the fictional small town of Ballybeg in the Northern part of Ireland. The
characters of all three plays are to a certain degree affected by certain form of oppression and/or
disadvantage that they have to face. Either they are experiencing direct impact of a totalitarian
regime (South Africa), or the turbulence of the change in progress (USA), or the aftermath of the
British imperialism (North of Ireland). All three authors belong to the main dramatists among their
respective societies. They have earned the high acclaim because of their artistic skills and the
power of their use of their art to comment on the situation of the disadvantaged communities in
their countries, the portrayal of the concerned situations, and the analytical dimension with which
they are able to present social issues through a lens of a dramatic composition focused on a
small-scale environment. Thus, they do the service to their communities by identifying and
presenting the most important and pressing issues. It is also due to the fact that they all write
in English that their works could reach broad audiences worldwide and inform them about the
problems, as well as entertain.

English playwright Tom Stoppard once compared in an interview the work of a journalist to that of a
playwright: “While journalism may throw light on an immediate situation, art puts the immediate
situation within a universal or timeless context” (Delaney 1990: 7-8). Stoppard then explains that
a dramatist’s possibilities to change the situation immediately are very limited (“Athol Fugard
can’t [cause the immediate change of wages of underpaid South African workers]” (Stoppard quoted in
Delaney 1990: 8)); on the other hand, a dramatist’s role which lies in bearing witness, pointing
out problems within a frame of a (timeless) work of art makes him an important observer and a
critic of the human condition in a particular society at a particular time. Such is the case of the
three plays.

The three critical voices are heard through the local varieties of English. They however differ in
the degree of criticism based on the time of origin of the plays as well as the level of
oppressiveness of the regimes and the current amount of repression. Thus, Blood Knot describes the
worst conditions of the three plays and yet its criticism is not open, but merely hidden in the
absurdity of the situation the play describes. Two Trains Running describes conditions where open
racism is rather a matter of the past but still keeps its traces – the play, written in 1990, also
contains open critical passages of the past with references to American slavery and its results.
Philadelphia, Here I Come! focuses on the bright future which lies in leaving the community and,
thus, the past; the depiction of life in a post-colonial present in a free and racially
not-stigmatized society is not critical, but still the sense of desperation in the dead-end
situation. All three plays thus bear witness of social problems (racism, poverty, hopelessness);
they are set in approximately the same period but the degree of criticism differs.

The silenced and implicit criticism of Blood Knot deals primarily with racism of the apartheid
regime. Yet the play is the strongest of the three in its criticism. It is doubtlessly because the
source of discrimination, the right-wing totalitarian government, was effective at the time of the
creation of the play and its political message is thus directed towards the present and the past;
the other two plays are focused on the criticism of the past in which there are the roots of the
misfortunate conditions of African-Americans and the Irish working-class. In comparison, the
acuteness of the inexplicit “laying blame” of Blood Knot will become apparent.

Blood Knot was a radical play at the time when it was first performed in South Africa. The main
source of controversy lay in “the play’s daring presentation of a black and a white actor on the
same stage in an apartheid-bound, Verwoerdian South Africa, where before The Blood Knot such a
gesture would have been considered nearly unthinkable” (Wertheim 2000: 17). It tells a story of two
brothers Morris and Zachariah Pietersens who live in “a one room shack in the ‘non-white location’
of Korsten, Port Elizabeth” (Fugard 2000: 52). The brothers are the only two characters of the
play. In the original production at Dorkay House, Johannesburg, Morris was played by white
author/actor Athol Fugard and Zachariah by black actor Zakes Mokae. The play opened in 1961 at a
time when racially mixed audience, let alone cast, was a risky enterprise in South Africa. Yet
Morris and Zach are both born from the same mother (the issue of their father is never addressed
and therefore it is difficult to guess whether they are full or half brothers) and they are both
subject to discrimination due to their status of coloured citizens. Morris is lighter to the degree
of almost “passing as white” (the South African expression for coloureds who looked as whites), but
the name of their township immediately signifies their race to the audiences:


Although Morrie and Zach appear to the audience as white and black respectively, the fact that in
1961 South Africa was didived into group areas cues the audience that the two brothers who live in
their small space in Korsten must, by virtue of their location, be classified as coloured. Thus
Fugard paradoxically creates a space that is at once the everywhere of Beckett yet has the
specificity of a particular Port Elizabeth coloured area. (Wertheim 2000: 20)


Morris stays at home during the day and takes care of the household and prepares meal and bath for
Zach who goes to work. A story of a brotherly love and longing for a better future and a woman
(Zach’s pen-pal Ethel, who unfortunately turns out to be white and thus unattainable) at the same
time narrates the injustice of racism:


The reality is that Fugard is a world-class playwright, who often uses the South Africa he knows so
intimately as a setting for more universal examinations of human life, human interactions, and the
powers of art. His several plays about South African apartheid may be set in a specific place and
time, but they deftly use the space/time coordinates to graph far more imposing and larger,
generally applicable patterns of race and racism. (Wertheim 2000: xi)


The criticism of the regime is implicit, yet powerful. Later in the play, Ethel sends a letter in
which she informs Zach about her plan to come to Port Elizabeth and see him. A mere possibility of
a meeting between black Zach and white Ethel causes fear in Morris – and Zach teases his brother
with the improbable idea that the meeting could eventually take place, but later he realizes that
there is not a chance they could ever meet peacefully. “If she sees me … she’ll scream,” Zach
agrees with Morris’ objections (Fugard 2000: 93). Finally, he admits that an interracial meeting
and let alone a relationship are simply impossible:


Zachariah. I can never have her.

Morris. Never ever.

Zachariah. She wouldn’t want me anyway.

Morris. It’s as simple as that. (94)


Different skin colour is the ultimate line of separation between Zach and Ethel.

Yet, there are others, too. Ethel’s letters suggest that she hopes that Zach owns a car which
implies her hope he is rich. However, Zach is poor – all his savings are just enough to buy decent
clothes for Morris. The setting serves as evidence of their lack of money: “The shack is tidy and
swept, but this only enhances the poverty of the poverty of its furnishing” (52). The pauperization
of the Korsten blacks is one of the results of the practices of the apartheid. Unlike in the other
two plays, there is no indication in Blood Knot that it is possible for blacks to not be poor.
Their destitute does not signify they did not succeed in life, but is a silent accusation of the
apartheid’s responsibility for the situation. Morris and Zach are not poor and coloured; they are
poor because of the fact. In Two Trains Running, on the other hand, some of the African-American
characters are rather rich. Although most of the visitors of the restaurant where all the action
takes place are relatively poor, there are a few wealthy characters such as Mr. West, the
undertaker. As a youngster, he spotted his chance of making fortune by burying victims of illegal
trades rather that participating in them. The play thus shows that it is possible for courageous
African-Americans to start business and become rich in the 1960s. The majority that is not rich
either suffers from lack of working discipline (Memphis about Sterling: “I still say that boy don’t
want to work” (Wilson 1993: 35)) or lost money gambling (Risa: “I don’t know why people waste their
money playing numbers. Time you hit you just getting back what you put in” (3)). The character of
Holloway, however, sees the difference between the economical situations of white and African
Americans in that it is a result of the former exploitation rooted in the black-enslavement past:
“That’s all you got around here is niggers with somebody else’s money in their pocket. […] Sooner
or later as sure as the sun shine… somebody gonna take it and give it to the white man. […] A
nigger with five hundred dollars in his pocket around here is a big man. But you go out there were
[…] they walking around with five thousand dollars in their pocket trying to figure out how to make
it into five hundred thousand” (34). The irresponsible attitude to money and gambling is an
obstacle in Sterling’s love of Risa, who is hard working and plans well ahead. However, when he
wins money in numbers he can bridge the gap and win her, too. There is also an economical
obstruction in Philadelphia, Here I Come! which is furthermore accompanied by a difference in
class. Although Kathy falls in love with Gareth, he cannot marry her – he never finds the courage
to ask her hand from her father, Senator Doogan. When they are standing at Kathy’s door, she
instructs him to lie to her father about his income to become acceptable to the family: “Kathy
(rapidly): You have £20 a week and £5,000 in the bank and your father’s about to retire” (42). But
he cannot lie like that and thus never asks for Kathy’s hand. Later, Gareth learns that Kathy got
married to a member of the upper-middle class: “some Dublin doc” (62). In Philadelphia, difference
in property is connected with the difference of class, an English influence on viewing the society
as stratified in this way. Thus, in both Trains and Philadelphia, love is able to transgress the
obstacles laid out by the difference of wealth and class (and in the former, it ends up happily and
in the latter too easily vanishes again). No kind of relationship, let alone love, is nevertheless
possible between Zach and Ethel in Blood Knot. In the 1960s South Africa, the colour of the skin is
a barrier impossible to overcome. Not only racism kills love, it does not let it sprout in the
first place. The difference in colour separates people irreversibly.

Fugard’s play, however, by a “blood knot” inseparably connects the two brothers, who are of
different skin colour. But first they need to learn how strong their tie is. Since Ethel is white,
they decide to “pass” Zach as white, too. Morris spends all the money he earned on a white man’s
clothes and Morris takes them on. It is a strong symbol, because in scene one Morris takes on
Zach’s coat: one can “get right inside a man when [one] can wrap up in the smell of him” (Fugard
2000: 67). Thus, light-skinned Morris symbolically accepts Zach’s dark skin colour. When he puts on
a white man’s dress later in scene five, he nevertheless cannot act as a proper white South
African. He tries hard and finally even calls his brother “swartgat” – “an abusive name for black
South-African, literally, ‘black arse’” (“Glossary” in Fugard 2000: 255). At this moment he is
assured that the blood they share connects them together and makes him black; the difference in
their skin colour and the clothes Morris is wearing cannot divide them anymore:


The blood that ties the two brothers together in the play is born out of love, the enactment of
desire in the human body. The two struggle in the course of the play, at times to realise this, at
times to deny it, to see, at the end, that they cannot separate. (Orkin 1991: 106)


The metaphorical “passing” is transformed into a literal one towards the end of the play. Morris
cannot pass by his brother and leave their hut in Korsten. He stays there with him, not passing by
him (literally) on his way out and thus neither “passing” as white:


[…] Morrie, instead of “passing” as white, must pass him by, recognize the truth of his
colouredness, an silently walk his own path, a path that brings him back to the coloured Korsten
township and to his dark-skinned brother. (Wertheim 2000: 28)


Their “blood knot” ties them forever, because “[all] they have is each other, their blood knot”
(Wertheim 2000: 32). By accepting the colour of his own skin as black, Morris joins Zach and
accepts his misfortune as his own.

Zach’s job as a park guard is to secure that no coloureds nor blacks pass him past the gate. The
choice of his work symbolically shows that “[in] an important sense then, the text presents Morrie
as thinking and acting in complete subjection to prevailing ideology and its manifestation in the
laws and institutions of the state” (Orkin 1991: 104). He, a black citizen, collaborates on the
discriminating process of deciding who does “pass” and who does not.

Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor which is represented in the play by the racist vulgarism,
is used in the park, through whose gate only whites can “pass”. The use of the word swartgat in
Afrikaans, the language of the former colonizer and one of the official languages of South Africa,
serves as a catalyst for Morris to realize his colouredness. The use of the language of the
colonizer presents an important aspect in post-colonial cultures. On the one hand, the “national”
langue (Chinua Achebe describes as the ‘national language’ English, French, Portuguese, principally
(Oyegoke 2001: 143)) is the heritage from the time of colonization. In the South African
post-colonial heritage, there are English and Africaans; it is the latter of the two that is at the
same time strongly identified with the apartheid. From this perspective, Fugard’s use of English is
understandable from at least two perspectives: it gives him an artistic advantage in the sense that
he belongs to “[those] writers who do write in English have used it as a cultural vehicle, a medium
through which a world audience could be introduced to features of culturally diverse post-colonial
societies” (Ashcroft 2001: 56); it also allows him to accentuate the use of the language of the
apartheid government – Afrikaans, the “other” language – and create tension between the two.
English was, however, a rather natural than deliberate choice for Fugard:


[Athol Fugard] was brought up and educated in an English-speaking environment, and chose to write
in English – or, more accurately, in a uniquely South African idiom, which reflects both
uncertainty and the potential of his culture by mingling English, Afrikaans and, sometimes, African
speech. (Walder 2000: xii)


The frequent use of Afrikaans “Ja” by both characters helps to maintain the presence of the missing
other on the stage that is the oppressive racist regime of the apartheid (represented by the
non-present and unreachable Ethel Lange). The occasional use of words in Afrikaans within the
English text helps to emphasize the difference between Morris and Zach and the oppressors.
Furthermore, one of the most important expressions in Afrikaans is a vulgarism that abuses black
South Africans.

     Wilson’s characters, too, use quite frequently the counterpart of swartgat in American
English, the word nigger. When uttered by a white American to call an African-American, it has
comparably derogatory and racist implications. However, all characters in Two Trains Running are
African-Americans who use the word to thus call themselves. The pragmatics substantially shifts the
meaning of the word from an insult to a denominator. White Americans cannot use the word for
reasons of just-being-born political correctness; therefore, African-Americans can exploit it to
confirm their identity as the other through its use. The language of the former oppressor has been
adopted and the term has moved from a periphery to the center of the vocabulary of
African-Americans.

     The role of the s-word in Blood Knot therefore differs from that of the n-word in Two Trains
Running. While they both serve as signifiers of identity, in the former they create the identity of
oppression and in the latter of unity. The s-word is harmful in Blood Knot:


Morris (with brutality and coarseness). Hey, swartgat!

(An immediate reaction from Zachariah. His head whips round. He stares at Morris in disbelief.
Morris replies with a weak little laugh, which soon dies on his lips.)

Just a joke! (Softly) I didn’t mean it, Zach. Don’t look at me like that! (A step to Zachariah, who
backs away) […] (Fugard 2000: 106)


The word is an illocutionary act of racial violence, because its use is reserved for whites.

     The common use of the n-word in Two Trains Running works as a unifying factor for the
African-American community, because it is no longer acceptable for the American whites to use it to
call an African-American. An utterance of the word would have similar illocutionary force, but the
play’s plot takes place in a society that does not accept racism as a norm. The shift of meaning of
the insult therefore illustrates on the linguistic level the difference in the criticisms of the
two plays and how they, each through the use of similar means, “bear witness” to different cultural
environments. It is, however, important to note that Two Trains Running does not idealize the
relationship between American whites and African-Americans. It quite clearly shows the pains of the
process of gaining racial equality in the 1960s America (e.g. rallies to commemorate M. L. King and
Malcolm X are among the play’s motifs). But from the perspective of the appropriation of a
derogatory name, it shows that the excluded minority has gained enough confidence to identify
themselves by the expession formerly used by the oppressor, which is a step that is unimaginable in
the context of the apartheid-afflicted black ghetto in Blood Knot.

     The language of the oppressor with its harmful expression still keeping the oppressive racist
meaning, Afrikaans, is spoken in the park – a place that is inaccessible for coloureds. It becomes
the spatial expression of the other with a similar symbolic value as Ethel Lange’s picture and a
white man’s speech imitated by Morris. But the two brothers do not dream about racial equality and
do not try to find ways to penetrate into the white man’s space. They dream about a place that
would be exclusively their own: “The thing now is to find the right place,” Morris contemplates in
scene one. He further describes their common wish: “It is going to be a small two-man farm, just
big enough for me and you” (Fugard 2000: 59). But then the chance becoming pen-pals with Ethel
Lange changes the brothers’ desire – they spend all their money on an unsuccessful attempt to
“pass” Morris as white to be able to meet her. The short possibility of equality shatters the plans
about the farm.

     The territorial issue plays a crucial role in the play:


Just as the brothers have not surmised from her name and address that she is white, so she, living
in Oudtshoorn and unfamiliar with Port Elizabeth geography, has not recognized Korsten as a
coloured area or Pietersen as a relatively common coloured name. These misunderstandings enable
Fugard rather brilliantly and incisively to present and explore both the comedy and tragedy of
errors possible in the given situation. (Wertheim 2000: 24)


The location serves to enforce the sense of blackness and emphasize the racial differences. Not
only is Korsten a black area, it is also an exploited piece of land, “a black slum near ‘the big
motor assembly and rubber factories’. […] Marginalized people live in the marginalized zone”
(Serinjeive 2001: 136). Together with the loss of money, the probability of ever leaving the black
township is minimal.

     The pauperization of the oppressed group and keeping them in an enclosed space is one of the
effective tools of colonization and a post-colonial routine: “The physical occupation and control
of space have been crucial to British imperialism (Ashcroft 2001: 124). The spatial distribution of
roles is important for maintaining the oppressor/oppressed relationship. While the oppressor has
access to the oppressed’s space (e.g. through institutional control – the police, army; or by
economic control – employment in factories), entrance in the opposite direction is denied. The
difference is visible in Korsten: the brothers are in constant “fear of being overheard” (Orkin
1991: 104) when they talk about Ethel. Although “no agent of the state is even remotely aware of
the existence of these brothers or what they struggle to understand in their hut in Korsten” (104),
the apartheid regime can effectively control their thoughts by the constant possibility of their
presence in the neighbourhood. Therefore, they dream about their farm. If fact, they cannot walk
anywhere on their own free will, or at least without the permission of the white oppressors.

     The British presence in Northern Ireland has lead to a similar division of space based on
religious differences. It was in such fragmented country that Friel was able to reflect upon the
issue of the identity with the land in his work. In the sense of a general evaluation of his plays,
Friel


highlights the problem of living in a community where the majority were denied basic civil rights
by an ascendant Protestant minority which, through a variety of political machinations and
manoeuvres, conspired to maintain control. Therefore, despite the fact that his family was middle
class and economically comfortable, Friel shared with his fellow Catholics a sense of frustration
and disinheritance. (Jones 2000: 2)


As the title suggests, Philadelphia, Here I Come! tells a story about leaving Ireland and coming to
America. The plot unfolds in the last day and night preceding Gareth’s departure. While Gareth’s
father called S. B. (and therefore nicknamed Screwballs by Gareth) has a strong sense of identity
with the land, he cannot see the future there and is determined to leave. Philadelphia is the dream
country, the space full of opportunities where he can make money and live a successful life that is
not awaiting him in native Ballybeg. He affirms this decision in a dialogue between his private and
public selves:


Private. You are fully conscious of all the consequences of your decision?

Public. Yessir.

Private. Of leaving the country of your birth, the land of the curlew and the snipe, the Aran
sweater and the Irish Sweepstakes?

Public (with fitting hesitation) I-I-I-I have considered all these, Sir. (Friel 1996: 32)


Gareth’s desire for the other place in America is strong enough that he accepts the idea that he is
leaving Ireland with a one-way ticket. In the determination, the effects of post-colonialism are to
be seen: the Empire has uprooted the country so much that it has nothing to offer to the young
generation that rather chooses to leave than to stay.

     The motif of the control of space in Two Trains Running casts yet another angle of light on
the issue of space appropriation. The play is set in the black neighbourhood of Pittsburgh.
However, Mayor’s office has decided to renovate the blocks and offers to buy them from the owners.
Memphis owns the house in which he runs a restaurant. He does not want to sell the property for
less than $25,000. It may seem that he is a lucky owner of a space of his own, but the house is
only a result of a former loss of property. Memphis’ story well illustrates the change in the
approach to African-Americans in the USA during the twentieth century as well as the difference
between the South and the North. He used to own a farm in Jackson, but he was driven out by local
whites in 1930s. They “cut [his] mule’s belly out,” (Wilson 1993: 72) and “set fire to [his] crop”
(73). Thirty years later, he is ready to go back there and get his land back.

     The play pictures the desired space as a dreamland of the past that is still waiting for the
rightful owner to return. The story is an open criticism of the Southern racism of the pre-war era
and points at the change in the situation of African-Americans in the 1960s and how their presence
in the North (a space that is not connected with slave-labour in the fields and therefore lacks the
memory of the master/slave relationship) contributes to the minority’s emancipation. However, the
desired space is at a farm in the South – for Memphis, it is accessible with the money he gets from
(majority) authorities for his house in the racially defined neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. Unlike
for the brothers in Blood Knot, there is a way for him from the ghetto. In all three plays, the
characters’ wish is to leave the space where they currently reside. Zach and Morris’ impossibility
to do so becomes even more evident when compared to the opportunities in the future of Gareth and
Memphis. The impossibility and improbability that Zach and Morris will leave Korsten, the vain
desire for Ethel’s love and the power of the language of the oppressive “other” show that the
play’s unspoken criticism of the apartheid in South Africa is indeed very strong and radical. Blood
Knot “bears witness” to the oppression and cries with a loud voice, which resonates even louder in
comparison with Two Trains Running and Philadelphia, Here I Come!.


References:

Delaney, Paul (1990) Tom Stoppard. The Moral Vision of the Major Plays. London: MacMillan.

Friel, Brian (1996) Philadelphia, Here I Come! In: Friel, Brian. Plays One. London: Faber and
Faber, 23-99.

Fugard, Athol (2000) Blood Knot. In: Fugartd, Athol. Port Elizabeth Plays. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 51-123.

Orkin, Martin (1991) Drama and the South African State. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Oyegoke, L. (2001) “Issues in the Criticism of African Drama” In: Losambe, L., et al. (eds)
Pre-colonial and Post-colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa. Claremont: New Africa Books, 140-53.

Sarinjeive, D. (2001) “Athol Fugard’s Dramatic Representations and Gender Politics.” In: Losambe,
L., et al. (eds) Pre-colonial and Post-colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa. Claremont: New Africa
Books, 128-39.

Walder, Dennis (2000) “Introduction”. In: Fugard, Athol. Port Elizabeth Plays. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Wertheim, Albert (2000) The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard. From South Africa to the World.
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Wilson, August (1993) Two Trains Running. New York: Plume.

Tomáš Kačer is a post-graduate student at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. He deals with
20th century British and American drama and theatre and is currently working on a thesis dealing
with the use of journalism in contemporary theatre in English. Among his interests, there are
playwrights Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn and scientific topics in theatre.


Mgr. Tomáš Kačer

Department of English and American Studies

Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University

Arna Nováka 1

602 00 Brno

kacer@phil.muni.cz